


She Stoops to Conquer

by AceQueenKing



Category: Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-21 09:08:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16573697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/pseuds/AceQueenKing
Summary: “You kissed me. I remember...“ Qi'ra frowned. “Well, I remember that.”“It’s a start.” Enfys said, knowing she should answer the unasked question as to what else their relationship entailed, and knowing full well that she wouldn’t.“Did we …are we in love?” Qi’ra asked, her face unsure. Enfys wasn't sure, either; she wanted nothing more than to say yes – but that wasn’t entirely true. A part of her wanted to say no, too, to break Qi’ra as she had so often broken Enfys, but she couldn’t do it; she was not, in the end, the same kind of snake.Instead, she placed two fingers on Qi’ra’s brow, and felt her decision damn them both with all the things she left unsaid.





	She Stoops to Conquer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ambiguously](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/gifts).



As the smoke of the last bombing offensive slowly wafted away from the Cloud Rider camp, Qi’ra saw the battlefield. She understood instantly that she had won.

The Cloud Riders had taken a direct hit: most had had to abandon their bikes, which had put the odds in Qi’ra's favor, as Qi’ra had planned. Enfys had more flexibility in how she could move people when she had the bikes, but Qi’ra had twice the manpower to throw at her.

And now the bikes were gone.

And judging by Enfys’ body language, she knew, absolutely, how the balance shifted. Through her binoculars, she could see Enfys clearly, standing at the edge of the camp. Her body was ramrod straight, her gloves gripping her staff so tightly that Qi’ra was sure she was leaving marks on the lovely pale copper skin hidden under them. She stalked toward Qi’ra carefully; Qi’ra watched with a cool eye as Enfys attempted an advance across the battlefield that was rapidly filling with blood from Crimson Sun and Cloud Rider alike.

One of her minions attempted to slip behind her and stab Enfys: a good plan, and smart. But then again, Qi’ra only hired those that were good and smart; unlike Enfys, she had deep pockets. She did her best to betray nothing as Enfys approached her; she slipped into the crowd of the battle, ignoring the bloodlust that sang through her veins to go after Enfys directly. It would piss her off more to see Qi’ra destroy her students with casual violence and so Qi’ra delighted in doing so. 

The emotions that laid under that desire were more complex. Qi'ra wanted nothing more than to see Enfys break, because Enfys was an itch under her skin that she could not scratch without threatening everything she had built up falling away from her. Still, she couldn't shake her obsession with the girl: she watched out of the corner of her eye as Enfys stopped the attack and threw Qi'ra’s subordinate over her shoulder, stomping on the boy's shoulder for good measure. Good help, it appears, would need to be found again. 

One of Enfy’s students came at Qi'ra with a blaster; she effortlessly disarmed him before he could pull the trigger, then stuck her own saber deep into his neck. A few months and seven dozens of battles ago, she'd have dispatched him with her own blaster, but lately, she'd gone for a simpler, more personal weapon: she was as deadly with her vibrosword as she was with any blaster, and she liked the subtle threat it held over everyone: even Maul's lightsaber could not slice through it and take her weapon away from her.  

"Charie!" Enfys cried out. It was a far cry from the wails she'd given for past comrades, but Qi’ra still smiled and looked back at her, feeling an annoying tinge of guilt that she quickly buried down deep into her chest. What was it about Enfys that made her want to do this? She scowled; these emotions were not things she could concern herself with if she wanted to keep her grasp on Crimson Sun.

Enfys started to gather speed and jumped; automatically, Qi’ra rolled to the side. She flipped up and moved int an attack, bringing a hand to strike Enfys' chest; with her armor, the direct hit didn't even push her back her so much as an inch. Enfys moved quickly, mounting her own offensive: she shoved Qi’ra off and pushed her away with her pike.

 Qi’ra sniffed. She never liked fighting Enfys with the pike; it was a long-range weapon and much of their battles were spent at medium to long distances, staring at one another and waiting for one of them to make a move, a mistake. Qi’ra preferred to fight hand-to-hand, and told her self it wasn’t just because she could go skin-to-skin with Enfys during these entanglements.

They had an odd relationship, her and Enfys; she wasn’t sure if she hated the Cloud Rider for being annoying or wanted to kiss the shit out of her. She was as idealistic as Han, but craftier: Enfys rarely bluffed, and she rarely lost. She was a brilliant tactician and if she wasn’t so force-blind due to her own damn morals, Qi’ra would have offered her a chance to work for her long ago.

“It’s over, Enfys!” She taunted; Enfys’ pike pushed her back and she raised her sword, blocking the strike from its hit. True to her morals, Enfys wasn’t going to even attempt for a kill shot. Even if she hadn’t raised her sword, the pike would have at best knocked her over. That was the problem with Enfys, and why her Cloud Riders would never truly win: she lacked the viper’s teeth to do the dirty work.

Qi’ra’s entire career _was_ dirty work.

She pressed with the sword, disengaging the pike and twirling away. Another reason she didn’t like the pike: too slow; it made every battle a chess match, not the fevered strikes that Qi'ra preferred. Enfys struggled to turn it around as Qi’ra effortlessly moved her sword, turning to cleanly take off Enfys’ head. She barely got her pike up in time, and the dim metal crash of sword on pike filled her ears despite the noise of the battlefield.

“Nice,” Qi'ra hissed. Enfys’ face was hidden behind her ridiculous mask, but she tilted her head slightly, and Qi’ra frowned. She didn’t like that; it was not what Enfys normally did and given how often they’d been fighting and fucking over the last few months, Enfys going off-script was dangerous. “What?” She didn’t take her eyes off of Enfys as Enfys stepped back: first one step, then two.

“Where are you going?” She shouted. Enfys broke into a run away from her, and Qi’ra started to run after her, oblivious to the other noises on the battlefield.

And that was when she heard it: the whistle of incoming mortar fire. She had only seconds to hear it before knowing she’d been played, that Enfys had been a distraction. Rebel Y-wings appeared in the distance, zooming closer. She tried to duck and roll but felt the hot burst of fire against her hand — not a direct hit, but damaging — and then another shot burning against her legs.

And then she felt a hot numbing shot of laser fire in her ribs and knew she’d just been shot from a blaster on stun.

She didn’t feel the second shot, but she saw it, growling helplessly as Enfys' associate rendered her best hand numb.

“Kriffing hells,” she murmured; she fought the influence like hell, trying not to slur her words.  She tried to get up, couldn’t; crawled forward. “Enfys!”

“I’m here,” Enfys said, softly. Qi’ra looked up. Enfys brought the pike down.

And as it all went dark, Qi’ra realized she didn’t really know Enfys as well as she thought. When it came down to it, she was equally willing to kill. 

* * *

 

“You should have ended it,” Te’ra hissed, naked fury on her face when she took in the woman who Enfys held beneath her. Qi’ra was still unconscious, now long after the battle had ended, and yet Enfys had felt unable to leave her side. Qi’ra groaned under her heels as if she could hear Enfys’ inner thoughts.

“Strike her!” Te’ra stomped the ground, hungry for blood; she drew a spiked mace from her back and Enfys held up a hand.

“No.” She couldn’t allow Te’ra to do it. They’d compromised their morals enough today. Qi’ra groaned underneath her and Enfys picked her up, unsure as to what she was going to do with the woman. What _could_ she do with the woman? Qi’ra had killed many of her people this day. And on many others, as well; Enfys was well aware of how dangerous the woman splayed out before here.  “We’ll take her with us,” she said.

“You’re making a mistake,” Te’ra snarled, her eyes wild with a grief that Enfys wished that she still felt. Tera was young and she could still feel the pain of colleagues being murdered by a corporation that she believed was wholly evil. Enfys had grown accustomed to it over the last few years, and no longer allowed herself to make strong attachments to her group. Her mother had warned her it would happen if she took up mask, and she did not believe her. She doubted that Te’ra would believe her if she told her this truth.

“It is mine to make,” she said simply; she rolled Qi’ra over her shoulders, rebalancing the weight to make it easier to defend herself should anyone try to fight her over Qi'ra'a fate. The girl’s eyes burned into her, and Enfys turned away first, moving Qi’ra back toward the tent they’d erected for their wounded. Part of the problem was that Te’ra was right: Enfys had no reason to spare Qi’ra. Qi’ra would never bargain with her, would never give her information for a chance of being let go: there was no bargaining with a woman who knew she was a viper, and Qi’ra was a most deadly snake. Politically, it made far more sense to execute her and be done with it. She wouldn’t be the first Crimson Sun that Enfys had killed, and odds were she wouldn’t be the last.

But still, Enfys knew, there was more to her than that. They lips had met on the battlefield as often as their weapons; there was a longing in Qi’ra, something that Enfys saw only in the most love-lorn of movements, when QI'ra held her just a shade too long when they should be ripping apart from one another. Qi’ra did not want to be what she was. Enfys could not help but feel like she was duty bound to offer her something different, even if the woman would never accept it.

Enfys was getting used to pyrrhic victories, anyway.

She set Qi’ra down tenderly on a bed, and ignored the quizzical look her medic, Vhaa Hohl, gave her: had his eyebrows been able to go any higher, she was quite certain they would float entirely off of his head. Which meant something, coming from a former Mandalorian. “Are you sure this is wise?” He asked in a low voice. “There are many in these beds because of her.”

“She will either fetch us a fortune in blackmail, or she will become one of us. Either way, it’s enough to keep her alive. Tend to her.” Enfys dismissed him with a wave of her hand, and sighed.

She was beginning to miss when the Cloud Riders limited their duties to simply conducting raids on the Crimson Sun’s mercenaries. Now that they’d expanded to attacking them directly, nothing felt simple anymore. 

* * *

 

Her head was swimming.

The woman awoke gasping; her chest ached, the skin tender and the nerves distressingly pins and needles. Something in her — she did not know what — was broken. She was — _somewhere_. A bed; the sheets thin. She wasn’t used to such, she was used to — what was she used to?

She tried to recover the memories, but she couldn’t find it in her mind; everything felt as if it was underwater, and no matter how hard she dove for the memory, she couldn’t find it. Everything swam in a hazy light, and she felt herself gasping, needing to break for the surface before being able to recall her memories. This was bad. She was alone. She was in a place where she did not know where she was. She was alone and she didn’t remember anything except that she was in danger.

She tried to move into a sitting position, but her ribs ached. A doctor noticed her movement; he moved toward her, and she searched, instinctively, for a gun. She didn’t have a blaster, and no matter how muddled she was, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she _should_ have one.

“Ah, you’re up.” The medic was dressed shabbily – _Rebel_ , her brain supplied, though rebelling against what, she had no idea. Judging by the lack of empathy in his eyes as she struggled to slowly lift herself from the thin cot, she wasn’t one of them.  

He shone a light in her eyes that hurt; she blinked. He looked …mean. His eyes were hard, his mouth a solid line of displeasure. He did not ask how she was. She stared up at him for a moment and wondered if he was going to hurt her, and instructively her eyes darted to what was around her to see what she could use as a weapon. She’d been trained to do that, she thought. Or was that natural?

“I’ll call Enfys.” His voice was quiet, little more than a whisper, and he leaned in close to make sure that she understood. “If you so much as move one muscle from this bed — I’ll kill you.”

Definitively not on the same side, she thought. She whimpered, and whoever she was, she must not have been someone who whimpered much. He tilted his head. “You — “  
  
“Please just….Just please tell me, what’s — what’s my name?” She asked, her voice unfamiliar in her own ears.

“You’re — “His eyes widened a moment, then he shook his head. “You’re Qi’ra.”

“Qi’ra? Qi’ra what?” She asked.

“Just Qi’ra,” he said, quietly, and then he was gone.

* * *

 

“And she doesn’t know?” Enfys asked, keenly aware of the saber of Damocles hanging over her head.  It was an old story, one her mother had told her as a child: the second masked rider, tested by the first. He’d let the second take his ride upon his engine, but only if he allowed the king to modify his engine. The first had done so by taking a mere wire from an engine and unclipping it, molding a line above the seat that held a lightsaber above over his second rider's head.

“She does not,” Vhaa said. “As far as I can tell. We could take her back to base, do some tests, but – “ He shook his head. “She was confused. And I been near her enough back when I was…” His voice faded, and she remembered, pink tinging her cheeks, that Vhaa had been captured and tortured in Qi’ra’s giant yacht for months. She’d bargained for him, had despaired when she saw the condition he was in.

It had faded from her lips when Qi’ra had kissed her. “What would you give for him?” Qi’ra had asked, her tone a bit bored – this Enfys remembered clearly, as clear as the plush carpeting that she ran her fingers through, mewling, mere moments later.

She would have given her anything, and judging by Qi’ra’s smirking as she’d left, Vhaa Hohl slung and half-dead over her shoulder – she knew it, too.

“Let me see her,” she said.  “Please.”

He did.

She was laying on a bed, an expression as unlike Qi’ra as anything Enfys had ever seen: she looked uncertain, unmoored. The cocksure certainty, the well-trained asp – gone. For a woman who’d had an answer to anything, to the point that Enfys wondered about Qi’ra’s whispered force abilities – it was odd. Humbling. _Alien_.

“Hi,” Qi’ra said, in a voice that seemed almost shy. She reached out a hand, and Enfys took it, even hearing the Medic suck in his oxygen in protest.

“Leave us,” she said, though the idea of privacy in a field hospital was laughable. Especially in a battlefield between Crimson Sun and the Cloud Riders.

“What do you remember?” She asked, and she kept her words gentle. There was no need to bring up the past, was there? Perhaps they could start over. Perhaps she could give Qi'ra the past she'd always wanted for her. 

“You kissed me. I remember...“ Qi'ra frowned. “Well, I remember that.”

“It’s a start.” Enfys said, knowing she should answer the unasked question as to what else their relationship entailed, and knowing full well that she wouldn’t.

“Did we …are we in love?” Qi’ra asked, her face unsure. Enfys wasn't sure, either; she wanted nothing more than to say yes – but that wasn’t entirely true. A part of her wanted to say no, too, to break Qi’ra as she had so often broken Enfys, but she couldn’t do it; she was not, in the end, the same kind of snake.

Instead, she placed two fingers on Qi’ra’s brow, and felt her decision damn them both with all the things she left unsaid.

* * *

 

It was odd, Qi’ra thought.

She wasn’t sure what she had expected when she asked Enfys if she could become a Cloud Rider. Enfys had looked at her, deadly serious. Qi’ra did not see why it would take her long to decide, and it did not – “yes,” she said, “of course.”

But still there had been a pause, and that pause had haunted her. Enfys had hesitated, and there was nothing Qi’ra could remember of her past that could suggest why.

But she knew there was something.

The other Cloud Riders looked at her oddly; it was not only the medic Vhaa who looked at her as if she was constantly growing new heads. Even the younger members kept their distance; Te’ra had not so much handed Qi’ra a helmet as thrown her one, and the scalding look on Enfys’ face before she donned her mask led Qi’ra’s stomach to turn.

Sometimes, she could find fragments of the past — there was a boy, once, and she remembered now that his name was Han. She remembered being parted from him, remembered a giant white shape slipping out of water in absolute darkness, then nothing but fighting. Enfys told her not to listen to those dreams, and for the most part she listened.

But still, it hurt, to not remember what she was.

Yet, still, a part of her was glad.  Judging by the fear on everyone’s face, perhaps it was best that she did not.  Qi’ra couldn’t shake the idea that the people were staring at her — and through Enfys offered half-whispered apologies that they were simply “skittish to strangers”, Qi’ra thought it was far more.

Perhaps it would change, now that she was going into battle.

“Are you nervous?” Enfys asked her. Her hand wandered over Qi’ra’s shoulder with a strange hesitance, like she was afraid of Qi’ra going into battle. She had nothing to worry about – Qi’ra had never recovered much of her old self, but her battle skills still let her compete with Enfys at every practice they’d held together, saber and pike clashing nearly as fiercely as their tongues in the moments after, when she was mewling into Enfys’ sheets.

 “No,” she said; then said again when Enfys asked her on the field itself. Enfys buckled her into a set of armor that fit not-quite-well; the fur at her arms strange, the boots a shade too big. Wouldn’t stop her. She took her seat on the back of Enfys’ swoop — that was the one thing that had never come back to her. She was _awful_ at driving the swoops. It was funny, how the skill to hold the sword was burned so hot into her muscles, yet driving — that was another story.

“Are you ready?” Enfys said, but she didn’t look at her. Qi’ra’s stomach twisted, looking down at a long drop that would mean certain death if the repulsors failed.

She held onto Enfys’ waist tight, and closed her eyes. She trusted her. She trusted her, despite the tension in Enfys’ shoulders that she knew was due to Qi’ra.

“I’ll protect you,” she said, softly. She kissed Enfys’ neck and held on tight as the repulsors lifted off. And she vowed, she would.

Whoever met Enfys on the field would meet death, and that suited Qi’ra just fine.

 

* * *

 

 

Enfys watched QI’ra on the battlefield, her heart beating so fast she thought it would rise up her mouth. She shouldn’t be doing this. She knew she shouldn’t be doing this. It was wrong to take Qi’ra into battle against Crimson Sun, wrong to have her at her back. Wrong to have her in her bed and in her heart, as it always had been.

And yet.

Here they were.

On the battlefield, together. She was nervous as she moved forward, but she shouldn’t have worried. She led with the pike, and Qi’ra followed through with the vibrosword. Back to back, they scored a major victory within ten minutes against the badly disorganized troops. Without Qi’ra, the Crimson Sun was nothing. Maul had nothing of her strategy, her delicate touch: he was playing a simple numbers game, and they were playing so much more. 

Qi’ra was terrible and glorious, as she always was. She fought tooth and nail, even in boots far too large for her delicate feet, with a sword not properly balanced to her hand. In mask, she was resplendent: a Goddess, come to wreck vengeance upon the world below her feet.

And when she pulled up the mask and demanded a kiss in the brief moment between the dismantling of the Crimson Sun’s first troops and the reinforcements arive, who was Enfys to refuse? She kissed her goddess on the field, their lips still tasting of iron.

“I think I loved you, before,” Qi’ra said in a dreamy voice that sunk deep into Enfys’ bones. She patted Enfys’ back and she wondered if Qi’ra had ever hugged anyone before. It was…hard to imagine, this vulnerability.

“We’ll… We can love one another now,” Enfys said softly. “Nothing but time.” She hesitantly touched one of Qi’ra’s greaves and felt the steel muscles glinting beneath the metal. Qi’ra gave her a wink, then her mask dropped back down,  the sword raised, and Enfys went back to fighting for a future she believed, with a woman she loved. Who was well-aware she was pulling the wool over her eyes.

But she’d never seen Qi’ra smile so …freely.

Qi’ra moved ahead of her, blaster deadly accurate, and Enfys cleaned up the mess and dared, for the first time, to hope they’d be happy.

* * *

 

And for a time, she was happy.

Qi’ra walked, head held high, on Enfys’ arm. The Cloud Riders gradually thawed to her; single-headedly winning a war against their oldest enemy seemed to do that. She wore mask; they took her in, and for the briefest of moments, Qi’ra was, for the first time in her life, happy. She had friends, a lover, a community to support her.

And then it all crashed down. The dreams came, dragging memories behind them. She did not want them, but then the fragments came in pieces, bloody shards of glass that cut through her dreams. Qi’ra woke each night,  knowing a bit more, and desiring a bit less.

Enfys knew it too. She awoke at night, wordlessly allowed Qi’ra to cry upon her shoulder and Qi’ra did, holding tight to the only rock she had left as she revisited every horror: Han, the White Worms,  _Maul_ , Vos. She named them and re-lived them and cried over the men she’d reaped and Enfys held her tight and she thought, for once, that she might be happy at the end of this horror show.

And then there was the last: Enfys, mewling on a rug she knew was her own. Enfys, the pike in her hands, slamming down on Qi’ra’s face. The motion so cruel and so fresh in her broken mind that Qi’ra stumbled form her bed and sobbed, alone, in the bathroom after that one.

And then she knew what she had to do.

She was always a viper, and vipers always struck first. 

* * *

“Enfys,” she said, and Enfys awoke, blood running cold.

Qi’ra was standing in their bed, her arms cradling her sword. Not the one that Enfys had given her, but her  _true_ vibrasword, the one they'd taken off of her for safekeeping. It had been locked in a vault, and Enfys did not want to imagine how Qi'ra had retrieved it. Qi'ra bent down and smiled at her, but none of the warmth was there now, and in its place was cold, unbridled fury. “I remember now,” she cooed. 

“I see,” she said, for there was nothing else she could say. Qi’ra pressed the saber to her throat and she did her best not to flinch, even as her heart broke into a million pieces.

“You tricked me.” Qi’ra’s voice was the Qi’ra of old: confident, poised, cruel. She had not missed it. “You _tricked_ me.”

“I did.” She raised her hands, a gesture for a peace she doubted was possible.

Qi’ra’s sword wavered.

“I wanted — “ Enfys tried to come up with an explanation, an explanation that had eluded them both for so long. “I wanted to make you happy. I wanted to give you something to believe in. I knew if I told you about Crimson Sun, you’d go back to them — ”

“Instead of destroy them?” Qi’ra thought of her first battle with Enfys, cutting her own Lieutenant’s neck as easily as she had once picked pockets. “You used me. You let me trust you. I _trusted_ you.”

“I did.” Enfys pursed her lips. “But you were so much happier, I… I couldn’t bear to end it.”

Qi’ra went still, and Enfys couldn’t stop herself from wincing. It was a bad sign, and she knew her well enough to know what would come next: the stillness, then the strike. She was a viper, and Enfys braced to feel her sting.

“I…” She paused. “I need time. I can’t…” She shook her head, uncharacteristic for what she had been, and for a moment Enfys dared to have the traitorous bird called hope swell in her chest.

“Take all the time you need. But I will be here,” she said, and she meant that. “And I’m sorry.”  
  
“I can’t forgive you.” Qi’ra put her saber back in her pocket, and Enfys heart beat a bit faster. “I have done despicable things, but this..."

“Stay here, please.” Enfys knew she was begging, and knew also that she didn’t care. “Don’t do anything rash. If I can do anything, if I can give you anything — I will do it, if you stay.”

Qi’ra nodded, then paused. She raised an eyebrow. "Anything?"

Feeling her doom and perhaps that of all the Cloud Riders gathering on her shoulders, Enfys nodded and threw herself into Qi'ra's pyre. " _Anything_." 

"I want control," Qi'ra hummed. "Of you, the Cloud Rider's, everything. You can be the figurehead but - my targets, my goals. I'll stay for _that_."

Enfys winced; it was a heavy cost, but still, she would pay it. "Fine." 

"You will serve?" Qi'ra said, leaning in so close Enfys could almost kiss her. "Serve me even if I order you to go against your pesky morals?" 

"You have my word," she said, feeling a hot tear spill down her cheek. "I said anything, didn't I?" She thought of the Qi'ra she'd gotten to know in the Cloud Riders and knew she would never meet her again, despite how much she hoped to.   
  
"So you did, so you did. _Well_." Qi'ra licked at the salt of her cheek, and Enfys sobbed. Qi'ra, cold as ever, turned toward the door. "I have plans to make. I'll be in your.. _our_ office. I look forward to working with you, Enfys." She left without another word, the silence of the door shutting all but deafening.

Enfys wanted to go with her, but didn’t. She watched the door until her eyes grew too heavy to keep them open.

In her dreams, she saw Qi’ra's ghost smile, and a part of her rebellious heart wondered if perhaps she could summon it again.

There was only one way to find out. 


End file.
